Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have been lambasted by Congressmen after apparently attempting to conceal technical problems and programme slippages.
The DHS' Customs and Border Protection outfit (CBP) has a project called the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), with a network-enabled tech portion known as SBInet …

COMMENTS

Another Shrubya boondoggle

"If Boeing had a way of convincing Mexicans and other poor folk it was a good idea to stay at home rather than joining the American Dream - now that might be a trick worth $30bn."

Bollocks! "Illegal" aliens do jobs in the USA that most Americans won't do for the same money. It's unfair exploitation, but trying to keep them out - or worse, actually successfully keeping them out - can only harm American businesses. Spending any money on the effort is nothing more than pork barrel politics.

Most amusing

Shurb?

Nah, this is a problem inherent in our government procurement system, regardless of party.

As far as illegals are concerned, most get paid substandard wages, which drives down the wages for all the low skill jobs. There are roofers in town getting paid $5/hr. How many people are going to take those jobs? Autoworkers are getting paid $27/hr to start, and most of those involve plenty of OJT.

Were employers be required to pay decent wages, more citizens would take those positions. Yes, costs would go up. But with the illegals being granted amnesty and now reporting their wages, costs are going to go up anyways. Unless employers fire them and hire the new wave of illegals.

Once again missing the obvious

You would think that because 20 million people are breaking the law somebody would realize that the law is broken!!! You can crack down on the border all you want. If you don't have a way for these people to come here legally, they'll just find another illegal way to get in.

The only way to stop illegal immigration in this country is to stop making immigration illegal. This is a country of immigrants and it disgusts me to see us treating immigrants this way. If we treated immigrants like this during the Ellis Island days, a third of this country's population wouldn't be here today. (Including me)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the only reason we try so hard to keep immigrants out is bigotry. Americans dehumanize the immigrants because they're poor, not white, and they don't speak English.

If the immigrants were Canadian, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

"the obvious"

skin color matters not. we arent talking about immigrants. immigrants move here for a btter life, attempt to integrate, become citizens etc. most of the problem is these ppl are moving here, for the money, we pay better, provide free services, and better security. they apparently have no desire to try and become american for any other reason than to not get deported, they PROUDLY tell you they are mexican(or hondurian etc) and how much better their country is. they dont try to fit in. worse because of the attitude, their children dont fit in either. i know grown men who were BORN in the us who cant speak english. plus it leads to a major increase in crime. yes i know i am generalizing, there are a great many who are upstanding citizens, and most dont really cause any trouble. but enough of them do that it dosent matter that some dont. in this day and age we can not have open borders. out social services net cant handle our current pop, let alone millions of other ppl who take more than they give. and as much as i hate to say it, 90% of the trouble comes from mexicans, apprently because they only thing that seperates the 2 countries is a line on the map, they feel entitled to come here and do as they please. almost every immigrant i ever talked to expressed joy to be in this country, except those from south of the border. they take all they can with care for what they give back, those arent immigrants, they are parasites. same as if i moved to canada for cheap meds, but then did not try to become canadian.

Title

Mexican LotR

I was talking it over with a friend and we came up with the idea for a great movie if this came to the public eye (no one pays attention in America unless they're spoonfed news). It'd be hilarious if there was a LotR spoof and the towers were the eyes of Sauron and we'd have a fellowship. Now what would we do for the ring...

WTF?

I came over the border from Canada, did everything the legal way. Sat on my ass not able to work for six months until I got a work-only SSN, fingerprinted 12 times by incompetent nimrods for the satisfaction of the FBI or whatever agency was too dumb to figure out I was missing a delta, swore I wasn't a Nazi or other bizarre things, made countless sit-on-your-ass-for-hours trips to the INS in Minneapolis and after six months I ended up with a crappy little card saying I could work and a stuffed-full banker's box full of stupid paperwork. Oh, and a job with IBM Canada, who didn't seem to want to hire me when I was a Canadian living in Canada, but snapped me up right away to work for them in the USA (go figure...)

People like Adam see the world the way they think it ought to be

It continues to amaze me how people treat the world as they think it SHOULD BE as opposed to HOW IT IS. "The only way to stop illegal immigration is to stop making immigration illegal" Adam said. What a quaint statement, how rich. I suppose you will want to legalize drugs next followed by a puppy in every child's arms. Why, cause every child ought to have one.

The issue is, if you pass laws, you should enforce them. Lack of immigration enforcement is why we are having this discussion. Politicians (of both parties) make big "get-tough on illegal immigration" statements and then do nothing. They get their sound bite and move along. Immigration has become another "third rail" like health reform, everyone in politics complains about it but does nothing. This is not a Bush problem nor a Clinton problem. It has been mismanaged for DECADES. Reagan's amnesty plan did nothing, look at us today talking about doing it again. Nothing changes.

Like the person who posted before me I entered the US legally from Canada, then became a citizen. How long did it take? Longer than a walk through the Arizona desert. My sister is still waiting and my cousin got her's after 8 years. Yes, 8 years. Why bother? In Adam's world I OUGHT to have just snuck across the bridge in Niagara.

I stopped being taught French in school and started learning Spanish. When in Rome the saying goes. But lots of illegals have no intention of integrating. They don't want to learn English, and like the previous poster said, many who become citizens still consider themselves Mexican (Immigrants that came through Ellis Island considered themselves American). Why become US citizens then? For the benefits.

Pregnant and about to give birth, get yourself across the border. Once that baby is born on US soil. . . . . . Well, you know how it goes.

Here in Southern Arizona our hospitals are going bankrupt because they are providing care to illegals. Is giving care to those in need the right thing to do? Yes it is. But it has a cost. To hospitals, to other patients and taxpayers. Illegals know they cannot be turned away from any medical care (its the law), even without the ability to pay. Guess what, they don't pay (everyone else does).We have to carry Uninsured Motorist insurance on our cars here because so many accidents involve illegals with no insurance. Am I saying only illegals have accidents? No. But there are so many illegals here that statistically a share of accidents involve them. Had an accident with an illegal with no insurance that was not your fault, too bad you pay.

An almost daily occurrence here is an accident involving a truck, car, or van load of illegals that wrecks on the roads and injures or kills some of them (and sometimes others). Remember, the statistics for number of illegals caught every year is several hundred thousand. In Arizona ALONE.

Here's a dirty little secret: Many people from Mexico who became US citizens DON'T want the immigration reform being talked about in Washington (Hell, many illegals don't want more illegals to cross the border). They don't want an influx of millions of people to compete with them for jobs. They support an orderly immigration process for ALL immigrants, no matter where you come from.

There are actually people here who want illegals to qualify for in-state tuition at the universities. Education OUGHT to be equal for all, even those who don't subsidize it with taxes. There are also people who setup aid stations for border crossers. Why would you set these up? Because people OUGHT to have food, water and shelter while illegally crossing the border. Do people die crossing illegally, more than you know and that's just sad. But is it the Border Patrols fault for trying to stop them? It is their purpose. I won't even go into all the ridiculous restrictions on what the Border Patrol cannot do. You don't know, but the illegals do. What kind of message does this send to people thinking about crossing the border illegally? Its sort of like holding up your left hand to say stop while waving them on with your right.

So lets ask the question: Why are all these people crossing illegally? Because Mexico is a country with less opportunity than the US. Why? People always mention about 20% of Americans holding 80% of the wealth (approximately, don't be picky, you get my point) . In Mexico the numbers are closer to 5% having (you guessed it) 95% of the wealth. Again, an approximation but useful in illustration the great disparity in wealth. What does this wealth imbalance cause? Increased corruption, poverty, crime, a mass exodus of citizens. My point? Illegal immigration is the symptom, not the disease. As Adam might say: Mexican citizens ought not to have to come to the US. However this problem will never go away until Mexico fixes itself. Politically and economically (Remember, Mexico is one of the world's top oil exporters. What is that money being spent on?).

How to do that? The juries still out on that one.

It's late and I am running long without even touching the drugs issue so let me end it here. I think Adam's sentiment can best be summed up as: The world ought to be fair. My reply: The world is not.

A simple solution

It occurs to me that the simplest solution would be for the US to simply invade Mexico. They havent done that for a while so it must be about time and the last time they did they ended up with Texas, a state famous for its oil and great wise leaders.

Come on, I dont see a bad side about this. Mexico is just next door so you dont have to go half way around the world to get there. US forces in the invasion can pop home at the weekend to see their family. The country is full of people who actually want to be american unlike in the middle east where the last thing they want to be is american so winning hearts and minds should be a piece of cake,

The actual invasion is going to be easy. Half the population of are out of the country on business and the rest go to sleep in the middle of the day so a noon time invasion should be a walk in the park. Those wide brimmed hats they wear should make bombing missions easy as from above they all look like a whole load if little bullseyes.

If it all goes to hell in a bucket like with the Iraqi thing then you are going to get an exodus of mexicans going home to fight in the insurgency. Hey that gets rid of the illegals in the US. Besides the only resistance you should expect is from some bloke in a black hat, cape and mask with a sword who leaves burning "Z"s on grassy hilsides.

It fits into the "War on Terror(TM)" which with little effort can be widened into a war on people with darkened skin, dudious facial hair, funny hats and a tendancy to wear bed linen for clothing and talk funny which still justifies the war in the middle east but stops the arabs feeling so victimised. You can even use it as a good excuse to bomb the French if you disregard the tendancy for wearing blankets and outlaw stripy black and white t-shirts and mime artists instead. That way the UK can join in too..

@ People like Adam

What if the LAW is the problem? Should you still enforce a broken, ill-conceived, and unenforceable law just because it's there, or should you change the law instead?

"My sister is still waiting and my cousin got her's after 8 years. Yes, 8 years. Why bother? In Adam's world I OUGHT to have just snuck across the bridge in Niagara."

I think you're missing the point. What OUGHT to be happening is we should fix our immigration laws that force people to hire a lawyer to plead their case and wait 8 years to get in. Heck, the department that processes applications from the Philippines is now processing applications from 1985!?! We OUGHT to relax our ridiculously tight immigration quotas and allow immigrants to come here legally, rather than forcing them to choose between sneaking across illegally or waiting in line for 10+ years to get in.

"An almost daily occurrence here is an accident involving a truck, car, or van load of illegals that wrecks on the roads and injures or kills some of them (and sometimes others). Remember, the statistics for number of illegals caught every year is several hundred thousand. In Arizona ALONE."

EXACTLY. If we had a way for them to come across LEGALLY in the first place, they wouldn't be sneaking across the border. We could actually let our border patrols go back to doing what they are supposed to do; stop smugglers and criminals.

"Illegal immigration is the symptom, not the disease."

You are right. People will always move from places of poverty to places of opportunity. America is supposed to be the place of opportunity, and for many years it has been. The problem is that we've closed off our borders to the people who come here for that opportunity. We have stopped letting them in legally, so they have to find another way in.

"They don't want to learn English, and like the previous poster said, many who become citizens still consider themselves Mexican"

If you think this is different than the way immigrants have behaved for the last 150 years, you obviously haven't been to any of the ethnic neighborhoods around our big cities. Go to any of them and you will find neighborhoods where immigrants from an individual country clustered together and brought their home country with them. They spoke their native language, and created a haven for their native cultures and traditions.

All of my great-grandparents came through Ellis island. All of them spoke their native language in their household. Many of them never learned English. They were proud of their heritage. They sent their children and their grandchildren to special schools to learn their native culture and be schooled in their native language. They viewed themselves as Polish or Hungarian first, American second. Yet, every one of them was proud to be an American and extremely grateful to be here. They were willing to fight, and die for America. They raised their families in America. They let their children fight, and die for America.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that because someone is proud of their heritage, they can't be proud to be an American. The two are not mutually exclusive.

The Mexican Dream

America welcomes anyone wanting to join the American dream. Bureaucracy makes it take forever, but us citizens get that too, so get used to it. We do not welcome those who intend to come here, make money, pay no taxes, use free services, then bugger off back to Mexico some day.

Illegal alien. There, I said it. Their ardent defenders would slap my citizen butt in jail for a tenth of the laws these jerks break, beginning with tax evasion. The benefits of having them here are outweighed by the down sides of 20 million people whose very presence is based on violating every US law they can get away with. If you non-American love habitual criminals so much, please contact the Mexican consulate to get all you want.

I know plenty of foreign national who play by the rules, and it's an insult to every one of them to defend the illegals.

@ a simple solution

that america Stole texas through the mexican was is a lie mexicans tell to ease their ego. mexico has always had social issues, revolutions and such, in the early 1800s several provinces, i beleive 3 in the north(including texas), and 1 in the south rebelled under general santa anna's govt. as i recall the texas forces captured him near san jacinto, and in return for his life he gave texas its freedom. once he was released, and safely back in mexico city he decalred the treaty that he signed null and void...but did not march back into texas. during the next few years, texas became a nation, complete with embassy and was a fully independent republic, even though mexico always claimed otherwise. then in 1845 texas requested admission into the union and was accepted, mexico was pissed, and both sides rushed troops to the border...even though the real border was never clearly defined i belive the historic was the neeches river, mexico claimed the brazos, and the us the rio grande. needless to say the armies found each other and started shooting. america won the war, and got most of mexicos northern territories, and the rio grande as a southern border, but then took parts of north texas away from texas to help pay for the war(texas northern border as i recall once went almost to colorado) all this recited from memory, may be off on a few points, but mostly accurate.

@dax farrer

thast only true if you are racist to begain with, no one is talking about closing down the borders. they are saying the are like 163 countries on this planet, and waiting list to get into this country. why should ppl be allowed to just walk across the border skipping the whole process we have set up, and there is no reasonable argument for a open border. they only ppl who are really against this are mexicans, because it stops them from abusing the fact we share a border. its not about closing the border, its about controlling it, hence my personal immigration slogan, "fewer old mexican day workers, more hot asian chicks!"